Category Archives: Credit Cards

Chase’s 5/24 Rule – A Game Changer

Chase is making the credit card game much more difficult. Starting some time in April, Chase will apply it’s 5/24 rule to new applications for all their co-branded and Ultimate Rewards earning credit cards (all their good cards). The 5/24 rule stands for 5 cards in 24 months, and means that if you have opened 5+ new credit card accounts at any bank in the past 24 months, you’ll be automatically denied for whichever Chase card you are applying for. Being added as an authorized user to someone else’s account also counts against your 5. All reports seem to indicate this is a hard and fast rule.

Such an ugly word…

The 5/24 rule is not exactly news. Reports of the new policy started appearing on Flyertalk’s Chase application forum last May. At the time it seemed like the rule only applied to Ultimate Rewards earning personal cards. This month the rule also kicked in for the Ink Plus, Chase’s Ultimate Rewards business card. Next month all relevant Chase cards will be affected.

I’m not going to waste my time and yours trying to paraphrase others’ description of the 5/24 rule. Instead, read this excellent and up-to-date wiki post at Flyertalk for the rule details.

IMPORTANT NOTE: ValueTactics reader Nidakeed reports having been denied a Chase Sapphire Preferred due to a nuance of the 5/24 rule I hadn’t previously seen reported. Apparently Chase counts the entire month of your card approvals in their month tallying. For example, if the card approval that puts you over the limit occurred on February 15th two years ago, you have to wait until March 1st to apply for the Chase card. If you apply on February 25th, Chase will see that your 5th card was approved in February and still deny your application for violating the 5/24 rule because the approval happened in the same calendar month as your current application.

How bad is the 5/24 rule?

This move by Chase is definitely a game changer, but how much it affects you depends on where you are in your credit card career. For those just starting out, there’s still time to adjust your strategy (more on that below) to minimize the impact.

For those who are playing the game full steam ahead and managing to get 10+ new cards per year, there’s a hard choice to make: either slow down your card applications to under 5 every 24 months, or completely eliminate Chase cards from your suite of regular applications. The former option drastically reduces your annual bonus point accumulation. The latter option disqualifies you from some of the best cards out there (many are from Chase) and severely reduces your accumulation potential for Chase Ultimate Rewards points, widely viewed as the most valuable and versatile points out there.

For those just starting out, you still have the opportunity to get in one or two good rounds that include cards from Chase before you hit the limit. Refer to my article on deciding on which cards to get and keep this new rule in mind. Specifically, I would recommend getting the Chase Sapphire Preferred (good for 59k+ Ultimate Rewards points just for making the minimum spend) and/or the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer (30k mile bonus as of this writing but wait until it get jacked up to 50k, which it does routinely). If you own a business or make side income that could be presented as a business, I recommend the Chase United Business card (as of this writing, a 50k mile bonus), and/or the Chase Ink Plus (60,000 Ultimate Reward points bonus). After you hit the 5 card limit in your first two years, you’ll have to decide how to proceed (see the next paragraph).

For those who are somewhere in the middle it’s time to reassess your current strategy. If you’ve been at it a while but at a slower pace, you have a decision to make. Do you want to slow way down on your card application rate to keep Chase cards available to you, OR do you want to have the freedom to apply for any card whenever the good promotions appear, but risk losing Chase as an option? Of course if you have already gotten the bonuses for the best Chase cards (see those listed in the preceding paragraph), this decision might be a bit easier considering you’re already probably waiting for the 2 year Chase bonus timer on getting each card’s bonus again.

5 card limit in 2 years — 5 cards on the Chase credit card homepage. Coincidence? ……yes.

Tactics to consider

Regardless of your situation, there are a few tactical considerations you need to incorporate into your overall card strategy:

If you’re currently under the 5 cards in 24 months limit the #1 smart thing to do is to front load Chase cards in your plan. Get the best 2-3 Chase cards in your first 2 rounds of apps to ensure you can get these bonuses before you hit the 5/24 limit.
Some cards offer bonus points for adding an authorized user (such as the Chase Hyatt and Chase Sapphire Preferred, each offering 5,000 points for adding an authorized user and making one purchase on that card.) All reports indicate that Chase counts being added as an authorized user against your 5 cards. If you are adding an authorized user just for the bonus, consider getting the card for a minor child or another trustworthy relative, as opposed to a spouse who may want to incorporate Chase into their own strategy. Make sure you get permission from the person. Also, make sure the authorized user is a real person or you risk having your account closed. There are many stories of people getting cards for their dog or cat and never having a problem, but I personally wouldn’t risk it.

Conclusion

The Chase 5/24 rule is going into effect for all their worthwhile cards starting in April. It isn’t the end of the world but it’s nothing to ignore either. Those of you just starting out, who currently have fewer than 5 new card approvals in the past 24 months, are best situated to avoid the ramifications of this new rule. Moving any Chase cards you may be considering to the front of your card application schedule is the primary tactic to mitigate the new rule’s restrictions. For those of you who are currently exceeding the 5 cards in 24 months rule, it’s time to take a close look at your strategy.

3 Years of Collecting Points Could be Worth $77k

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I recently tallied up all the cash back, deferred interest, purchase reimbursements, airfare, and hotel stays that we’ve received from 3 years’ worth of points-earning credit cards. The results shocked everyone who’ve seen them, including myself! Jump ahead to my data or read some background information on how I derived these numbers…

Quantifying the value of points and miles is difficult. Many bloggers regularly publish lists wherein they try to estimate the value of a variety of points and miles. These are useful for comparing the relative worth of different points and miles, but sometimes I question the absolute values they come up with. They base their estimations off theoretical redemption values, which is tricky to do accurately.

Every points/miles redemption comes with opportunity costs. Every points transfer comes with risks. The cash price of award seats and hotel stays fluctuate in the time between booking and flying/staying. For this reason I decided to do my analysis empirically instead of theoretically. The data set I used was Nicoleen’s and my history of points and miles redemptions from the first three years (roughly) after getting the sign-up bonus on our first points-earning credit card.

How I measured value
As I discussed in this post, there is no perfect method of measuring the value of redeemed points and miles. For certain types of redemptions (most notably business and first class airline tickets) one could make the argument that the amount of money I saved by using miles to book the ticket has to be less than the cash price of the ticket. After all, had I paid cash I wouldn’t have paid the exorbitant price of the business or first class ticket; I would have bought an economy class ticket. On the other hand, I did receive the benefits and experience of flying in the premium cabin, so looking at it this way is an argument for counting the cash value of the actual experience I received.

Furthermore, without using value tactics to book the flights and/or lodging, there are certainly several trips I wouldn’t have taken at all. In those cases, you could argue my savings was $0.00. I saved nothing on the trip because I wasn’t going to pay for it in the first place. But then you could just as easily argue that since the whole trip was a “bonus,” it was actually more valuable than the cash price because of the excitement of going on a trip I couldn’t normally afford.

In my own case, I redeemed some miles for extremely high mile:dollar ratios, such as the $9821 one-way, first class tickets to Europe last summer. I also had some fairly wimpy award redemptions, like when I used a free night certificate on a $198 hotel stay. The same certificate could have been used at properties with $1000+/night price tags. The efficiency level at which I have spent my points and miles is varied, but all in all I think I have a pretty reasonable redemption profile.

One last note before I present the data: Although I tallied up all our redemptions and come up with an overall average value per point, this figure is really just for fun. The real purpose of this post is to silence the skeptics and show that messing around with credit cards, points, and miles IS WORTH IT! As I tell my friends over and over, the effort they see me put into this game does not represent the effort they would need to exert to get the same results. I have the additional tasks of writing this blog, helping others with points redemptions, reading enough other blogs and forums to fake like I’m an expert, and developing tracking tools and spreadsheets specifically so that you can skip the “is it worth it” assessment. I’ve done the math for you and it’s worth it! Read on for proof…

The Data

Here’s the summary table. Explanations are below.

Totals is pretty self explanatory.
Cash Totals includes all cash or cash equivalent in the forms of bonuses, reimbursements, category cash back/reimbursements, etc.
Airfare Totals is self explanatory.
Hotel/Lodging Totals is self explanatory. I used the room rate for the premium room if the stay included an upgrade to that room type as a result of status we only had by having active credit card accounts.
Aggregate Point Totals includes only redemptions paid for with points. For example, free night certificates were not included because no points or miles were used.

I added our current point balances to the total points we already spent. This number represents the total points we earned in about a 3 year period. I then applied the average aggregate value per point to this number to come up with the $77,178.80. This is the value of points redemptions we could theoretically receive with our three years of playing the credit card game!

I also totaled the estimated savings we got by shifting our revolving balances to cards with interest free promotional periods. I use the interest rate we were paying on the single card out entire balance was on when we started getting new cards as the bench mark. We’ve saved an estimated $1,774.94 in interest in 3 years of opening new cards!

Stay tuned to a future blog post where I will delve deeper into which cards and programs earned us the most value, how much our average credit card application was worth, what this has done to our credit scores, and more!

Our Fall 2015 Credit Card Applications

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In the past few months we’ve added more new babies to our household than credit cards. While babies are cute and cuddly, they tend to increase household costs. Credit cards, on the other hand, are hard and plastic, but they can be worth hundreds of dollars in value. A few days ago we got 4 new arrivals at the house and none of them was cuddly…but they were all valuable. Here’s a breakdown of our latest round of card apps:

Nicoleen:
Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve

$95 annual fee due up-front
Two free weekend night certificates for any Hilton property worldwide after spending $2.5k in the first 4 months
10x points earned on Hilton properties purchases, 5x on travel, 3x on all other purchases
HHonors gold status when card account is active

Ross:
Citi Thank-You Premier

$95 annual fee waived the first year
50,000 Thank-You points after spending $3k in the first 3 months (worth a minimum of $500)
3x points earned on travel and gas, 2x on dining and entertainment, 1x on all other purchases

And we each got:
Chase Hyatt Visa

$75 annual fee waived the first year
Two free night certificates for any Hyatt property worldwide after spending $1k in the first 3 months
5,000 Gold Passport points for adding an authorized user
3x points earned on Hyatt properties purchases, 2x on dining, airfare and car rental, 1x on all other purchases
Anniversary free night certificate good at any Hyatt property, category 1-4.

The Rationale:

The Chase Hyatt card was the driving force behind our choice of cards for this round of apps. The Hyatt card has been on my radar for a while because of the incredible value potential in the two free night certificates per card. A pair of these cards could potentially be worth almost $4,000 in lodging. Two nights at a fancy hotel hardly constitutes vacation though, so the obvious tactic to maximize this card is for both of us each get our own card; then we’d have 4 free nights.

We have always planned on both getting the Chase Hyatt card at the same time, but it’s still a stretch to call 4 free nights a vacation. The other major card offering free nights is the Citi Hilton Reserve, with its two free weekend night initial spend bonus. If we could find a vacation-worthy Hyatt property in close proximity to a vacation-worthy Hilton property, we could get a 6 night vacation split between two luxury properties, for the $95 annual fee paid one credit card! I earned the bonus on the Citi Hilton Reserve last year so I was ineligible for the bonus again. (Furthermore, the most I would have been able to add to the proposed vacation would be one free Hilton night, since the certificates are only good for Fri/Sat/Sun nights.)

I always try to apply for only one card per issuing bank per app-o-rama. We both had the Chase slot filled with the Hyatt card. Nicoleen filled the Citi slot with the Hilton Reserve. But I still needed a second application, and Citi had some good card options. I settled on the Thank-You Premier with it’s 50,000 point bonus.

It seems like a pretty good plan. We have a specific redemption idea in mind for the hotel free nights, all three hotel cards compliment each other, and the Citi Thank-You will add some points to the general pool for when it comes time to find airfare. So this was a hybrid of both basic strategies I wrote about in this post.

Application set-up and results

Chase has been getting stingy and seemingly capricious about approving credit card applications lately. This is concretely seen in their Ultimate Rewards earning cards, which they will now outright deny to anyone who has had 5+ new accounts with any issuer in the past 24 months. But there have also been an increasing number of denial reports with co-branded Chase cards. i didn’t want to take any chances because the Hyatt free night certificates are only good for a year, so it was crucial that Nicoleen and I have as much time overlap in certificates as possible.

To prepare for the Chase application I requested credit line decreases in two of my Chase cards: my Sapphire Preferred from $11.1k to $5k; and my IHG card from $9k to $4k. I made both requests via Secure Message a few days apart, and both credit lines were lowered within a day of the request. I had closed my United Mileage Plus Explorer account with a $9k credit limit back in April, so I figured between the 3 credit line decreases I would have plenty of overhead left with Chase. The thought was to remove “maxed out credit limit” as a possible reason for denial. It worked!

Nicoleen had also recently cancelled her United card and she has fewer Chase accounts than I, so we didn’t do anything in particular before her application. Our luck continued as she was instantly approved too!

In my experience applying for Citi cards is much more of a push-over. The only time I was not instantly approved for a Citi card was when I got “pending” with a business card. The call to the reconsideration line for that card was quick and painless.

So with nothing more than fingers crossed we applied for our respective Citi cards and experienced the always welcome instant approval notices!

Within a week we had all 4 cards in our possession:

Minimum Spend and Redemption Plans

With a specific goal to use 3 cards’ worth of hotel certificates on a single trip, some tactics need to be employed to maximize the probability of everything lining up correctly. Number one is to get all the hotel certificates ASAP. This means getting the spends on the Hyatt cards and Hilton card taken care of.

The Chase Hyatt cards’ spends are easy, with only $1000 per card to get the certificates issued. AND they are issued as soon as the minimum spend has been met; not after the statement closes like with the Hilton certificates. Furthermore, getting these done before the Hilton is tactically important because with 4 contiguous free nights we could still cobble together a vacation. But if we got the Hilton certificates and booked a room, only to have the nearby Hyatt property become booked while we were still working on the Hyatt card spends, we would have to regroup and make different plans. So . . . Hyatt cards first.

Since there are many airlines that fly to our destination (Maui) but only one Hilton property we have in mind, Nicoleen’s Hilton Reserve gets the next highest priority for our card usage. While the 50,000 bonus Thank-You points would be a nice help to our plans, they aren’t as critical as the Hilton free night certificates, so the Citi Thank-You Premier will be the last bonus spend we complete.

In my next post it’s on to the fun part: sign-up bonus bonus redemption plans!

Which Card Should I Get?

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Around the time of Nicoleen’s and my anniversary trip to Europe this summer, valuetactics.com got quite a lot of attention from Nicoleen’s facebook crowd. Many friends and relatives asked Nicoleen or me how we landed such good deals on the flights, hotel, and other trip expenses. If you want more detailed on the trip itself, check out this post outlining our itinerary.

If you’re one of those who are just curious how we did it (and maybe are curious how you too can travel for free!) in this post I’ll briefly outline the strategy we use to accumulate points and plan trips.

If you’re just starting out it’s helpful to adopt one of two strategies, to avoid accumulating what may turn out to be less than useful points.

Points and miles strategy #1: Goal first, then reverse.

If you have enough lead time, you can start with your desired travel plans and then work backwards to figure out which points and miles programs would be most useful to you, and which cards/offers are best at earning you those points or miles.

Here’s a hypothetical example to illustrate the thought process:

You and your spouse want to go to Park City, Utah, for a weekend skiing get-away in March. Your travel budget only covers lift tickets, dining, and bar tabs; so your airfare and lodging need to be free. You’re also very demanding about accommodations so you need to stay in a luxury resort.
You regularly read valuetactics.com, so you know the best way to get free luxury hotel stays with a few month’s notice is with either the Hilton HHonors Reserve card from Citi or the Hyatt card from Chase. Both cards offer 2 free nights as the sign-up bonus, but the Hilton free nights are only good on weekends – not a problem for your plans. (Others, like Chase’s IHG card, only offer free nights as an account anniversary award). If you and your spouse each get approved for your own cards, you have 4 free nights to redeem…more than sufficient for your weekend ski trip.
You check availability for March 18-21 at Hilton’s luxury resort in Park City, the Waldorf Astoria, and Hyatt’s, The Escala Lodge at Park City. Unfortunately, (for the sake of the example) you find that the Hyatt has no rooms available for reward certificate redemption. You check the Hilton website…your heart is pounding…will there be free rooms available? …yes! The Waldorf Astoria has plenty of reward certificate availability for that weekend! Looks like you’ll be applying for that Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve card.
The nice round number for the room’s award points price tells you it’s Hilton’s “standard” rate, meaning it’s available for a free night certificate redemption. A $659/night room for free…not a bad deal for taking a few minutes to apply for a card and make sure you hit the bonus spending!

The Waldorf Astoria in Park City, Utah
Ok, you have lodging covered. Now on to the free airfare. One of the keys to redeeming miles for flights is to find the “saver” level award availability. This is the discounted rate and will allow you to maximize the value of your airline miles. You can safely assume that at a given moment you have at least 2-3 options for cards that will earn you 40-50k airline miles or points that can be transferred to airline miles. So for this example, we’re trying to get two flights on our desired dates (March 18-21, 2016) for under 50,000 miles.

Let’s start with Minneapolis’s home town hero, Delta:

72.5k miles each; 135k miles for both of you…unacceptable.

On to United:

No saver level seats available for your dates.

How about American?

No dice.

Southwest?

Now we’re talking!

Two round trip flights for under 50k miles.
So how do you get 48,284 Southwest miles? Chase routinely (2x per year on average) jacks the sign-up bonus on their Southwest card up to 50,000 points. For this example, let’s say the 50k promotion just ended and the card comes with the standard 30k bonus. If you think you can get the bonus and quickly put another $18,284 in spending on the card to get the remaining points needed for your flights, then get the card! But remember, seat availability for flights is constantly changing so you probably want to get your seats booked ASAP, so trying to earn the remainder of the points organically might take a few months and your seats may be gone by then. Alternatively, you could each get the card and you’d be set, but I personally would never apply for a card that regularly has a jacked up bonus unless that promotion is running.
Is there a more streamline way to get 50k Southwest points fast? Why yes there is! Southwest happens to be a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, meaning you can transfer UR points to your Southwest Rapid Rewards account at a 1:1 ratio, for free, instantly. There are several cards that earn Chase Ultimate Rewards including Chase Freedom, Sapphire Preferred, and Ink Plus business. After looking at all the benefits of these cards, you decide on the Sapphire preferred because the annual fee is waived the first year and it will earn you 49,000 UR points after meeting the bonus spend of $4k in 3 months. How convenient…that’s just what you need to transfer to Southwest and get your flights for free!

Let’s recap this example:

For applying for 3 credit cards between the two of you, paying the $95 annual fee on the two Hilton cards, and paying the $22.40 in fees to the airline, you are getting:

$2,082 worth of lodging to stay at the Waldorf Astoria for three nights
$809.92 worth of airfare on Southwest for two round trip tickets to SLC
That’s a total of $2892 in travel expenses for paying $202, doing some research, and spending 15 minutes to apply for a couple cards. A pretty good value if you ask me!

Points and miles strategy #2: Go all in!

If you don’t have a specific goal in mind, or would like the most flexibility when planning free travel, you could go all in and start accumulating as many points and miles as you can. This also means diversifying. Concentrating on highly versatile points is one facet of this strategy. Earning points in several different competing programs is another.

This strategy can be as valuable as you want it to be. The more carefully you plan and the more variables you look at, the more you can maximize your card applications. It would take a whole book to look at every facet of this strategy, but I will try to get you to think about some things to consider when getting into this game for the long haul.

Which cards can you “churn,” getting the bonus multiple times?
What is each card/bank’s particular quirks when considering applications?
What is your current credit score?
Which cards earn what kind of points?
Which points can transfer to which other programs?
Are there currently any “jacked up bonus” promotions running?
Do you have any travel plans on the horizon, a la strategy #1?
How can you group applications to maximize all of the above?
Other than the points bonus, what other benefits does each card have?
Can you stretch the benefits of a card by staggering them with your spouse?
Are there any weak points in your points and miles portfolios?
Which cards will soon be phased out?

As you can see, there is a lot of thought that can go into this game if you really want to maximize the value. Use this site and others to learn all you can about the different programs. I promise you, the learning curve is steep but short, and 90% of the confusion will go away by the time you earn your first card bonus and book your first trip with miles and points. If you have already been taking advantage of frequent flyer programs or hotel loyalty programs, you already have an advantage.

I recommend liking the ValueTactics facebook page and following the twitter feed to stay updated on these tactics and strategies! I’m also always willing to help if you contact me privately.

A Hybrid Strategy

Of course you are not bound to one of these two strategies. Realistically everyone should incorporate elements of both into their planning, regardless of how much thought you put into that planning.

I hope this little primer helped some of you understand what to think about when deciding which card(s) to apply for. Now get out there and capture some value!

Card Review: Wells Fargo Propel

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Wells Fargo’s flagship points earning credit cards are the Propel World and Propel 365. The Propel World has a $175 annual fee with a 40,000 point sign-up bonus, and the Propel 365 has a $45 annual fee with a 20,000 point sign-up bonus. There are some differences in category bonuses as well, but the annual fee and initial bonus are the biggest differences. This review is for the card my wife and I have, the Propel World.

Basic Stats
– Issuer: Wells Fargo
– Logo: AMEX
– Points earned: Wells Fargo Rewards
– 1 pt per dollar on all purchases
– 2 pt per dollar on hotel stays
– 3 pt per dollar on airfare
– Foreign transaction fee: no
– Chip: yes
– Annual fee: $175

Current sign-up bonus
– 40,000 bonus points after $3000 spend in 3 months
– 1st year annual fee waived
– 0.0% APR for 12 months

Wells Fargo’s Propel World and Propel 365 cards have received relatively little attention on the card blogs. The Propel World is worth potentially $630 in bonuses alone. The card has a pretty stiff annual fee, and some people have reported trouble getting approved if they don’t have any relationship with Wells Fargo. But I think the biggest reason this card is underplayed on the major card blogs is that there doesn’t seem to be any card application referral links. Ok, so that’s a bit cynical, but it might have some truth to it.

After hitting the bonus spend you’ll have at least 43,000 points. Some flyertalk users report waiting over 2 months for the bonus points to post to their accounts. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you don’t enjoy maximizing complex redemption schemes) the best way I found to spend the points is to simply take the cash. Points can be redeemed for $0.01/pt in $25 increments so 43,000 points are worth $425. You have the choice of taking the cash as a statement credit or having it transferred to your Wells Fargo bank account.

Orphan Points

Points leftover after redeeming for cash (i.e. any balance less than 2,500 pts) aren’t casualties of war as I thought they would be. Some helpful folks at the flyerfalk forum on this card brought up the fact that you can buy gift cards with any combination of points and dollars. In my example I bought a $25 Subway gift card for 1,277 points and $12.23. Since I would have spent $25 at Subway eventually anyway, I view the points used as basically being converted to cash.

The Airline Bonus

Besides having no foreign transaction fee and a few other minor travel perks, the Propel World’s most valuable benefit is the incidental airline expense reimbursement. The card will reimburse up to $100 in airline fees every card member year. This pretty much includes anything charged to an airline other than airfare. When I got the card there was hardly any information online about which purchases count as an airline purchase.

– My first test was a miles transfer fee with American Airlines. The whole fee was reimbursed.

– For my second test I purchased a wi-fi connection on an overseas flight on American Airlines. As I suspected, the purchase was charged to T-mobile, not the airline. This was not reimbursed.

– My third test was an in-flight food and beverage purchase aboard an Air Canada flight. This was not reimbursed and my statement showed the charge coming from a third party food vendor company.

Although in-flight purchases like meals and wi-fi may seem like it would count toward the airline charge reimbursement benefit, be careful to check whether or not it’s actually the airline charging you, or a partner company. The primary way I have seen reported to take advantage of this benefit is to buy a gift card from an airline. There have been some mixed reports of this method too, however, so do your homework before you make your purchase. Flyertalk has a thread on the card, which contains many reports of using the airline benefit.

One last note on the airline benefit: for those who want to really maximize this card’s benefits, there are reports of people getting the $100 airline reimbursement, waiting until their anniversary date and getting another $100 reimbursement for their second year of card membership, and then cancelling the card before the annual fee posts. Of course if you plan on keeping the card and paying the annual fee, you have a whole year to get the benefit again.

My experience with the Wells Fargo Propel World

My wife and I both applied for the Propel as the AMEX part of a “big 3” application round, along with Citi and Chase cards. She was instantly approved and I got “pending.” I called the next day and after some verifications, the rep approved the account.

The cards came about a week later in a some pretty nice packaging. We each got an authorized user card for the other’s account to help coordinate hitting both bonus spends. Around the time of the first payment due date, I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the 0% APR period, which I had failed to notice earlier. These turned into our go-to cards when our cash flow was lagging, and we soon intentionally racked up balances that would sit there until the end of the promotional 0% period.
Near the end of our first year with the Propel, as the $175 annual fee loomed ahead, it was pretty easy to determine that keeping the card was not worth the fee. Both of my attempts at using the incidental airline benefit on my card had failed (see above) so I wanted to capture the value of this benefit before closing the card. A $100 American Airlines gift card did the trick. I also used the rest of my orphan points on a Subway gift card, squeezing the last bit of value from this card. Before the statement with my annual fee closes, I’m going to try and get another $100 AA gift card for my 2nd year airline benefit.

Nicoleen’s card already had a few airline mile transfer fees reimbursed and I was too lazy to check her statements to see how much was left of the $100 benefit. Additionally, I had her statament closing date wrongly recorded and by the time she was going to call and cancel the card, her annual fee had posted to her account. I discovered this while at work and I panicked, directing her to call right away and try to get the fee removed. She did so, and only after I received the news did I realize I had forgotten to have her get a $100 airline gift card for the 2nd year reimbursement benefit. Oh well…we missed out on a free $100 in airfare but still avoided the $175 annual fee. And all that was on top of the $450+ in value we got from her card; so yeah…I can’t really complain 🙂

Should you get this card?

Yes. Although Wells Fargo Rewards points are non-transferable and basically only worth the cash, $425 in points for a $3k spend is a good value any day of the week! Add the airline benefit and a little extra spending and you’re up to a $650 value for getting this card.

So where would the Propel fit into an overall card strategy? Of course that depends on your situation, but here are some things to consider:

– The bonus has been the same since this card’s inception so timing (vis a vis an elevated bonus offer)probably doesn’t matter
– All reports indicate your chances of being approved are higher after having some history with Wells Fargo. A few months with a free checking account might do the trick.
– If your planned app round already has a Citi, Chase, and/or Barclay card, this could fit the AMEX role.
– If you know you’ll be paying for some miles transfers or purchases, having the incidental airline expense reimbursement benefit on this card can cover those costs, up to $100/year.
– If you currently don’t have a card that waives foreign transaction fees and you have international travel on your horizon, the Propel might be good to have.

Click here to apply for the Propel World AMEX from Wells Fargo

Signs of a Credit Card Zealot

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(This is a data recovered post, originally published on August 1st, 2015.)

To make room for the new baby coming early next month, I am in the process of converting my office into a bedroom. Moving my computer desk and all my other various belongings is quite a disruption, but it gives me an excuse to do some thorough cleaning and reorganizing.

Today my cleaning efforts revealed a corner of my computer desk where I discovered a horde of credit card activation stickers that I had been idly and inadvertently collecting for a couple of months:

It was about 2 months ago when I last cleaned my desk, which means I’ve activated at least this many cards since then. Do normal people have this type of mess lying around their work space? Are scattered traces of credit card and loyalty program sign-ups a regular feature in your home? Or am I becoming some sort of credit card zealot? If so, I’m proud to be!

Chase Ultimate Rewards: Versatility Matters!

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(This is a data recovered post, originally published on July 5th, 2015.)

How my Ultimate Rewards points have bailed me out 3 of the 4 times I have been short on points/miles

My first major credit card sign-up was the Chase Sapphire Preferred (see my full review here). I had heard and read about how great Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points were, and if you’re a regular on points blogs you’ll know that UR points are consistently touted as the most valuable points out there. The most commonly cited reason for this value is their versatility. I didn’t really understand why this was such a big deal until I booked my first flight with rewards.

Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred, with no penalty (i.e. a 1:1 ratio), to 11 different partner programs. This means if you are short points for a purchase with one of these programs, you can back-fill your balance with transferred UR points. Or, like I did with my first ever award flight, you can fund your whole purchase with transferred UR points.

I used UR points to fund my United Mileage Plus account for a trip to Europe before I had ever earned a single United Airlines mile. My Southwest Rapid Rewards account balance was only 750 points when I discovered that Southwest was the only airline that worked with my schedule for our Jamaica trip earlier this year. For yet another flight booked through United, my wife’s United Mileage Plus account had enough mileage for the award ticket but mine was a few thousand miles short, so once again UR points saved the day as I was able to back-fill miles from my Chase UR account to book my ticket.

In each of these cases there was very limited award seat availability and the ability to quickly get the points/miles where I needed them (I should mention the transfer only takes a matter of seconds!) probably saved my travel plans.

This versatility to transfer to partner programs, $0.01 cash redemption value, and discounted travel booking redemption make Chase Ultimate Rewards a strong contender for the most valuable type of points or miles out there. And if things didn’t already seem too good to be true, they are also some of the easiest to get. All Chase Sapphire and Ink products earn UR points and these cards consistently have great sign up bonuses, like the current 45k bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

All the Ultimate Rewards earning cards we’ve had over the years

Building up UR points is a valuable tactic to accomplish your overall miles and points strategy.

My Last Round of Credit Card Applications – Overview

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The last weekly update mentioned I was going to do a mini app-o-rama. I applied online for 2 cards that night: the CitiBusiness Platinum Select American Airlines AAdvantage World MasterCard (what a mouthful!), and the Chase IHG Rewards Club card. I’ll post full reviews of each card later, but for now I’ll just mention each card’s bonus offer.

CitiBusiness American Airlines AAdvantage card: 50k miles after $3k in 3 months spend
Chase IHG card: 70k IHG points after $1k in 3 months spend

Here’s how my online applications fared:

Boooo… No one likes to get the “Application Pending” message. It’s so anticlimactic compared to the “Congratulations! You’re awesome enough to get our great rewards card! Great job, sport!” message you get when you’re instantly approved. Alas, I got two ‘pendings’ so I called both reconsideration lines the next day.

I got through to a live person with Chase after 1 ring. After I asked about the application he quickly put me on hold so he could find someone to review my app. When he came back after 3 minutes and told me to hold again I asked him if my total credit limit with Chase was the reason my application was pending. He said it was over the limit he’s authorized to approve, but he had recommended a credit increase (meaning I would get the new card) based on my credit report. Before he could get me on hold again I asked him if he could just transfer some credit limit for the new card from one of my existing Chase cards. He quickly told me that it would work, he asked which card I wanted the credit limit transferred from and how much, and put me on hold to finalize it.

When he came back after another 3-4 minutes the application was approved, pending identity confirmation. He added Rachel to the call (same person I talked to last time I needed to verify my ID) and after a few questions she verified that it was really me. Everything went quickly, smoothly, and most importantly, the way I wanted it. I’ll chalk this call up to another example of Chase’s excellent customer service.

The next call was to Citi’s application status hotline. After hearing that my app was still in process, I followed the prompts to speak to customer service. This may have been a mistake since I already had a direct phone number to the CitiBusiness recon line. I think all I got for my laziness was an extra 20 minutes on hold. When I finally got a real person on the line, it went very smoothly. He checked on my application and verified my income and identity. After 2-3 minutes on hold he informed me I was approved and would get the card in the mail within 5-7 business days. It arrived a week later (today). Overall the Citi customer service was good, but the hold time was annoying.

Why only 2 card applications, bro?
Good question. A friend of mine questioned my choice and number of cards for this latest round, and I don’t blame him. Conventional wisdom says “App 3 cards; make each app-o-rama count, son!” While I usually agree with that wisdom, there are several reasons for my decision to only get 2 cards this time around.

We may be applying for a mortgage or mortgage pre-approval within the next few months. While my high 700s credit score probably won’t suffer enough to make a difference on a loan application, I don’t want to push it. My logic may be a bit off, but it makes me feel better to tone it down a bit for the time being.
There are no *spectacular* offers out there at the moment. All the standard “good” offers that are available right now are already in my wallet or in my safe. And the really good cards I still have yet to get (Chase Hyatt, Southwest Rapid Rewards to name a few) don’t fit into my timing strategy at this point.

Overall, this nice little app round gets me 50k AAdvantage miles (currently my favorite airline miles) and [at least] 70k IHG points, which fills a weak point in my overall points and miles portfolio. Stay tuned for more details on the offers, as well as full reviews on my new cards!

In the meantime, here are the links to the flyertalk wikis for the cards in this post. The wikis contain links to the card offers; and the most recent forum posts contain data and reports on people’s recent applications and bonus offers.
Flyertalk IHG Card wiki
Citi American Airlines cards/offers

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My Last Round of Credit Card Applications – Overview